Energy rhymes with economy. It has been happening for at least 800 thousand years, since "homo erectus" discovered fire and paved the way for the ability to economically transform the ecosystem to draw from it opportunities and resources useful for growth. Today, in addition to the economy, the question of energy pertains to a plurality of other variables, ranging from finance to science to geopolitics and ethics. Albeit slowly and amidst many contradictions, global awareness is consolidating about the fundamental objective of making the use of energy compatible with the safeguarding of an increasingly suffering and unstable planetary ecosystem. It is the complex issue of global warming, the greenhouse effect and a strategic path to contain and reduce harmful forms of energy use and the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energies. In this large long-term reference framework there are shorter-term dynamics that are very articulated and interesting. It is striking that the theme of global energy sustainability today tends to be declined also (if not mainly) in the search for a reduction in the degree of energy dependence of a single country on the rest of the world. It happens mostly in the United States.
“Freeing ourselves from foreign oil” . “Free us from foreign oil”. This is what President Obama reaffirmed with authority in his re-election acceptance speech held in Chicago in the early morning hours of last November 3,6th. The road to energy self-sufficiency is a priority in American politics. It is not a medium-term project, but a fact already relevant today for the USA, and for the rest of the world. A geopolitical "novelty" that has a precise name, that anyone involved in these times of energy has come to know. It is "shale gas", the gas extracted from schists, the new resource which is rapidly contributing to the reduction of energy dependence in the United States and is strongly influencing the global trends in the prices of one of the most important fuels in existence. As a result of the "shale gas" shock, as well as the continuation of the difficult global economic situation, the "spot" price of natural gas on the American market is now equal to half of that recorded five years ago. Exactly, $7,3 per mmBTU today versus $2007 in November 90. As a reminder, the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil has risen from $110 to $XNUMX over the past five years.
The "shale gas" is a particular type of gas which impregnates some shale rocks or rocks which have the characteristic of flaking according to parallel planes. For more than ten years, the Americans have been pioneers in the extraction of "shale gas". Already in 2010, thanks to the contribution of shale gas, the USA overtook Russia as the world's leading producer of natural gas. The US Federal Energy Agency forecasts that in 2015 – therefore, in just three years' time – the share of "shale" in the total availability of natural gas in the USA will reach 38% against 3% ten years earlier. The share of gas imports will drop to 18% by 2015. Further reductions in dependence on imports will take place in the following years. American reserves of "shale gas" amount to 187 trillion cubic meters equal to 120 years of consumption. In parallel with "shale gas", the Americans are also pushing for other "unconventional" fuels such as the so-called "tight oil", crude oil obtained from rocks located at great depths. Like shale gas, tight oil helps reduce US energy dependency. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) by 2020 the USA will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's leading oil producer. 2020 is tomorrow.
That of shale gas and "tight oil" is also an important lesson for us Italians. In the search for energy sustainability, large countries such as the USA associate, and perhaps prefer, the consolidation of a lower dependence on energy imports from abroad. Italy imports over eighty percent of the energy it consumes, being among the OECD countries the one with the highest dependence on foreign sources. Not only. With an incidence on GDP and world exports of the order of three per cent, Italy accounts for more than eight per cent of international natural gas imports. Even more, Italy accounts for eighteen per cent of the international total of net electricity imports calculated by the IEA: no less than six times our country's share of the world's product. Our energy dependence from abroad is consistent and should be corrected, in order to be less vulnerable to crisis situations in individual supplier countries and also to try to reduce the significant cost gap that penalizes the energy consumption of Italian companies and their competitiveness.
The formation of a substantial energy deficit represents a structural feature of our external accounts. In the first nine months of this year, on the accounts of the trade balance, the energy deficit amounted to 49 billion euros. Reasonable estimates make it possible to certify a forecast of the energy deficit for the current year of around four percentage points of GDP. In 2007, the energy trade deficit did not exceed three percentage points. In absolute values, the energy deficit rose from 30 billion euros in 2000 to 42 billion in 2007 to 61 billion in 2011 and could approach 70 billion euros at the end of this year.
Italy is making significant progress in reducing the public deficit. The same does not happen in terms of the energy deficit, despite the recession of the national economy and the downward trends in the prices of some forms of energy which are strategic for Italian imports such as natural gas. The determinants of the onerousness and rigidity of our energy bill are many and complex. In addition to the lack of efficiency and competition on the internal market, there is an issue of energy "security" which must also be tackled. This is the lesson to be learned from the American case, to increase the diversification of supplies by supplier/source and to reduce the Italian economy's dependence on foreign energy.
On a global level, energy represents a determining factor in the environmental, economic and geopolitical scenario. The preservation of a fragile ecosystem is confronted with the pressure of new and old consumption in a world where today there are still 1,3 billion people who do not have access to electricity. In this great theater, the main protagonists of economic growth are positioned with solid energy strategies aimed at greater efficiency, but also at the diversification of sources and the reduction of dependence on foreign countries. The USA and China have clearer ideas of a Europe that moves in random order on the energy front. In addition to the Fiscal Compact, a common industrial policy and a European energy union would be needed. A European energy union, sixty years after what was the European Community for coal as well as for steel. It could be very useful for us Italians, also to remove that energy cost gap – the difference between 15 cents per kilowatt hour in Italy and 10 cents per kilowatt hour in the rest of Europe – which weighs on national companies and contributes to making it even more bumpy road to recovery.
